It claps its hands at him and hisses at him from its place.
Job's long speech about the doom of the wicked ends here. A man is swept away by God's judgment, and no one mourns him — there is only applause and jeering. Two questions follow: who claps and hisses, and why Job of all people was painting a ruin so much like his own.
The final humiliation
The verse is not about the death itself but about what follows it, in public. One writer, quoting an older translation in which people do the clapping, reads the gesture as the neighbours' verdict on a life:
Leslie M. Grant"Men shall clap their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place" (v.23). Rather than sorrowing at his disgraceful death, those who have known him will be glad he is gone.
Whose hands?
The Hebrew leaves the subject open, and commentators differ. The ESV keeps the storm as the actor — "It claps its hands at him and hisses at him from its place" — and one careful translation of the chapter follows the same line, making the wind itself the mocker that drives the man out:
William KellyAn east wind takes him up, and he is gone, and it sweeps him out of his place; and it casts at him, and spares not; from its hand he would gladly flee. It claps its hands at him, and hisses him out of his place.
The same writer allows both readings when he summarises Job's argument, and the force is the same either way — creation and neighbours agree in scorning the man God has removed:
William Kellydeath opened the doom he could not escape — the man whom men, if not the wind itself, hissed out of his place, celebrating his destruction.
The wind that does not spare
The clapping belongs to a storm, and the storm is not really weather:
Leslie M. Grant"The east wind carries him away" (v.21). Scripture often uses the east wind as a sign of God's judgment (Ex. 14:21). That judgment is slow to arise, but when it comes, it "does not spare" (v.22). Men may try in desperation to flee its power, as they do from hurricanes, but it is no use.
So the jeering does not bring the man down. God's judgment does that, and the scorn only follows him out.
An end Job knew was not his own
Job had known deep distress himself. Yet he describes this ruin from the outside, as a watcher and not a candidate:
Samuel RidoutSo Job calmly describes an end he knows is not his own. What has made the difference? Is it not the faith that has held fast to God through all his distress? — a God he knew so little, and whose afflictions he had complained about.
His friends should have drawn the same conclusion from the speech they had just heard:
Leslie M. GrantClearly Job had no fear at all of sharing a judgment like this. His friends should have seen at once that these things would not be true of Job. It would have been wise for them to offer Job an open apology for their cruel charges against him.
A warning pointed back at the accusers
Job's friends had charged him with being a hypocrite. He now paints the hypocrite's ruin in darker colours than they had, and turns their own weapon around:
F. B. HoleIn the rest of the chapter we find Job enlarging upon the way God deals in judgment with the hypocrite. He had just about charged his friends with being hypocrites in their accusations against him. So his words appear to be a warning to them that this might be their own fate, something like what had happened to him.
Right about the wicked, not yet right with God
Job is right that the end he describes is not his own. But holding fast his righteousness is not the same as being cleared by God:
F. B. HoleThis "righteousness," as Job 29 will show us, had to do with his outward conduct. God's searching light had not yet entered his soul. He had been charged with being a deceiver and a hypocrite. He knew he was not, and he was not going to plead guilty to it for a moment. We know he was not either. But outward correctness does not in itself count as righteousness before God.
Summary
- Wind. The clapping and hissing close a storm. The east wind that carries the man off pictures God's judgment: slow to come, sparing nothing when it does.
- Scorn. The last thing the wicked man receives is not mourning but applause at his removal; the world is glad he is gone.
- Speaker. Commentators differ over who does the hissing — men, or the wind itself. Either way the man is driven out of his place with contempt.
- Contrast. Job paints this end knowing it is not his own. His friends should have seen that his sufferings did not fit the picture.
- Limit. Job's clean record answered his accusers. Yet outward correctness is not righteousness before God, and that reckoning was still ahead of him.